Western Short StoryThe Shoshoni SheriffTom Sheehan

Western Short Story

For
a long time Jimmy Ditson nursed a deep desire to become sheriff of
Sunquit. It sat in him like a tree had taken root, socked down deep,
making way. Behind it was a love of the land that did not need to be
nurtured: rather, providentially, that love had been in him since the
beginning and that love continued to flourish. He was only 18 years
old at election time but every knowledgeable person in Sunquit knew
he was the best rider, the best roper and, most important, the best
shooter in the whole Snake River region. He’d be the best sheriff,
of course. Hadn’t he by himself faced up and beaten off five
rustlers who wanted a piece of his father’s herd, had driven them
clean across the valley and up along the river like a banshee was
chasing them? Nobody ever heard from them again, the way stories
eventually come back to their point of origin, the way crooks somehow
have to come back to the scene of the crime.

It
looked like a cinch that he was going to get the job because nobody
was actually running against him except an old town flannel-mouth
looking for free drinks and long conversation. That’s when an old
ranch hand of his father, Ginger Clougherty, rickety, really slowed
down, riding what might be his last horse, came loping back into town
on an off-hand visit and mentioned that he thought Jimmy Ditson was
really an Indian kid. He didn’t say anymore, but the threat was
there and the hackles began to rise in some quarters. Another town
man threw his hat into the mix, tripling the options.

Talk
about “The Shoshoni Sheriff” began to circulate. Of course, none
of it was mentioned in front of Joe Ditson, Jimmy’s father, a most
respected rancher in the part and a great boss. But the word was out
and about, as the barber would say. The word circulated throughout
Sunquit, some people believing and some not as sides began to develop
in the coming election. In saloon and barbershop the talk created
arguments and, as often happens, out and out hostility.

“Who
wants a damned Indian as sheriff?” a displaced Irishman yelled out.
“He’d sell us out, any of them would,” and another man
answered, “Who the hell wouldn’t blame them the way the
government treats them like they were foreigners. There were here
before us. Just like the Crown sent its soldiers into your old
Ireland. Did you fight or run, Dolan?” His fists were doubled even
as he spoke.

The
fight was a major breakout, and Sunquit could feel itself breathing
deep into the night.

When
things cooled off from that fight, new talk started, and Ginger
Clougherty jumped right back into it. “I heard up the line, from an
army trooper, that one squaw is said to have left a baby someplace
years ago, to get proper care while she was on the run from the army
driving to get the Shoshonis onto the reservation. Nobody knows her
name, but one buck said her name was White Flower Curled Over. It’s
just another story that a few drunk injuns keep talking about, like
the kid is supposed to come back someday when the mother calls. Like
he’d know her, huh?” He paused, as story tellers do, before he
said, “Heard it was the Ditson place.”

It
all began about 18 years before.

Fifteen
years married, childless the whole while, Grace and Joe Ditson felt
the clock winding down on their chances to become parents. A local
beauty with the warmest smile one could imagine, she was in her
mid-thirties, and Joe, a bit older, was a rugged, dogged rancher who
kept on the move. Handsome in a dark way, curried with a sense of joy
at the world around him, nothing much escaped his eye or his
attention. Along the Snake River the two were known as a
hard-working and devoted couple whose ranch sat on a lovely piece of
geography and folks in Sunquit, the nearest town a half day’s ride
down river, often talked about what a great place their ranch would
be for a child to grow up on. It all changed the early September
morning, mountain cooled air settling onto the lower landscape, the
sun just breasting Putney Peak, that Joe went out of the ranch house
to milk the cow. Grace, as she usually did right through to spring,
turned up the collar of his jacket before he left the house. Ditson
drew in a rich lungful of the dawn. On a ridge uphill from him, lit
up by the rays of the sun, he saw a figure of indistinct form looking
down on the ranch, and then apparently turned to walk away. The air
was sieve of cold traces, and he knew a sensation of unknown origin,
as though it was pummeling him awake.

That’s
when Joe Ditson, for the first time ever, heard a baby cry on his
ranch, on Grace’s ranch.

The
first squall, from inside the barn, sent a chill across the back of
his neck, even with the collar pushed tightly up under his Stetson.
Before he dared hope for an unlikely gift, he could see Grace’s
smile blooming like a spring flower. As he rushed toward the barn,
coolness still a valid sensation, he turned to look up the hill once
more. A dot of the indistinct form disappeared over the brow of the
hill, as though a quick goodbye had been said after a short visit.

In
the barn, from somewhere deeply inside, hidden or covered, he heard
the cry again. It came from a corner where a pile of hay sat as tall
as he was. In the midst of the lower edge of the pile the baby was
wrapped in warm hay, a warm deer hide, and cradled in a crude but
strong basket. Ditson’s rugged hand touched the soft, sweet and
cool forehead of the child who had dark eyes, dark brows and a light
blond tint in forelocks showing under a sleeve of a hat. The child
looked up at him and smiled. The warmth almost choked Ditson on the
spot, and then plunged down into his innards.

He
picked up the basket, light as a bird’s nest, brushed off the hay
and rushed to the house, calling out Grace’s name as he ran. “Heat
up the stove, Gracie. Get some water going. There’s a baby here,
Gracie.” His yells were loud, demanding, and full of surprise, and
he was suddenly conscious that he had not called her Gracie in years.

Grace
heard her husband’s yells and then the baby cry, a whimper of a cry
as the child bounced with her husband into the kitchen. Grace was,
immediately, all hands and all action … another log on the fire, a
pot of water moved to the front of the stove, her hands out to hold
the newcomer, to make way her kind of welcome.

Her
smile broke like a May morning on the meadows, and Joe Ditson almost
melted again. The new warmth broke in behind his collar and melted
again down through him.

In
a demanding quiz she said, “Where? When? How?” Then, shrugging
her shoulders, said, “Who?” asking the really important question.
Grace asked the questions practically in one mouthful as she held the
baby close. She suddenly stripped the skins off to find it was a baby
boy. She said, her surprise and delight continuing, “I think he’s
about three months old,” as if she had been a mother forever. A
woolen blanket was wrapped tightly around him with a mother’s
caress.

“In
the barn,” Ditson said. “I saw someone on the top of the hill out
past the front pasture, looking back this way. It could have been the
mother. I am not sure. It could have been a Shoshoni woman. The baby
was put in among the hay, warm, but easy to spot, like he was meant
to be found quickly. The deer skin says she’s Indian as far as I’m
concerned. And the troops have been moving the Shoshonis around for
months like they don’t even belong here.”

“If
it is his mother, do you think she’ll be back?” The child was
hugged to her chest, the wide eyes looking at Ditson over Grace’s
shoulder. The smile continued radiant on her face. “He gets a bath
as soon as the water’s warm. Get that nursing rig you used on the
lambs when the yew was killed by the wolf. And go milk the cow right
away. He’ll need fresh milk. You hurry, hon. I’ll take care of
him.”

“What’ll
we call him?”

“James.
Jim. Jimmy. Jimmy Ditson. Yes. His name is James from now on. You can
call him what you want. For me he’s Jimmy.”

“Jimmy
it’ll be.” Ditson went to milk the cow. He had a son, for the
time being, and it felt as good as he always thought it would feel.

The
boy grew well on the Ditson ranch, in the care of loving
parents-at-will. The blond hair belied his mysterious appearance and
the connection with what Grace and her husband always believed was a
Shoshoni maiden either ousted from her tribe or driven by soldiers as
part of the government decree. Either in private, or often in deep
thought, they wondered about her coming back. Would it be threat or
salvation, for them, for the boy, for his real mother?

Sometimes
those thoughts disappeared in a wink as they reveled in Jimmy’s
growth and his inborn skills with rope, horse and rifle. A natural
hunter he was, patient, skillful, and able to devise and react to
situations met in the mountains and out on the vast plains. And he
was a handsome young prince, as Grace often said, noting always the
golden patch of hair that sat like a pompadour on the top of his
brow.

The
ranch hands, in a flux of arrival and departure, paid little
attention to the youngster as he grew through the tiers of his years
and the rounds of a changing of the guard, as it were. Most of the
cowboys, herdsmen most of their adult life, worked hard and loyally
while on the payroll, and played hard whenever they had a chance.
Those opportunities came mostly down river at Sunquit. And they
talked little, carried conversation in stories and escapades rather
than in rumor.

Yet,
Joe Ditson, no angel in his younger years, knew where most rumors
were exchanged … at the bar, in a card game, or an upstairs room
for rent on a Saturday night. He was fully aware that Jimmy’s
arrival would surface sometime down the road, or down river, as he
corrected his own thought.

The
threat of such revelation never bothered him much in the face of
circumstances that he never once told Grace about, and which had
accidently come to him … not from town, but from the crown of the
same hill where he thought he might have seen Jimmy’s real mother.
A frequency of it developed and he began to enter a log of marks on a
beam in the barn.

One
morning, in the heart of spring, the pasture alive with color of new
blossoms, a breath of surprise in the air, Joe Ditson saw again a
horseback rider on the brow of the same hill. Jimmy was helping to
break in a few horses and was showing off his skill at it, and a lot
of whooping was going on among a few ranch hands. “Way to go, kid,”
they said in unison. “You got him now. He’s gonna remember you
next time he grits his teeth. ‘Member that, Jimmy, cause he’ll
remember you. They don’t none forget their first ride or their best
boss. That’s horse talk for you, kid.” They all laughed loudly
and slapped hands, all of them thinking about Saturday night in
Sunquit, half a day down the river, half way to hell or heaven.

Jimmy
Ditson, they had agreed, was as dogged and determined as his father,
and probably a better rider from the word go. They applauded again
and laughed again at creative moves to stay in the saddle and his
ordinary slight falls and thoroughly enjoyed the moment as though a
shivaree was being shared.

And
Ditson, the lone one among them noticing the distant visitor, played
it casual, bringing no attention to the mysterious watcher.

That
was when he made his next secret entry on the beam in the barn,
month-day-year accompanied by a V for Visitor. He had
done so for many years.

When
Jimmy Ditson was 18 years old, and a party was to be celebrated for
his approximate birthday, based on Grace’s guess at his age the day
he came to them in a basket in the barn, Ditson saw the frequency of
visits had been firmly established. 16 times in the 18 years, just
about one every year, in the summer, the rider had appeared, and the
visit noted.

Ditson
never rode out to investigate, because he’d always see Grace’s
collapse at the threat of losing her son. He assumed whoever it was
was satisfied life had been decently good to the youngster. The
repeated trips boded good interest, faithfulness and a sense of
loyalty. In a strange way they made Ditson happy, because the visitor
always made a point of being noticed, as if a message was being sent
or delivered, or a love was being addressed.

But
things going on in Sunquit about the election were brought to
Ditson’s attention. He would go in and see how things were going
for Jimmy who had been in town for more than a week. He told Grace he
had to go to Sunquit.

“I’m
going in with you, Joe. No way am I staying here, out of the action.
You get the rig and horses ready for a ride along the river and I’ll
get everything ready for the ride. Something to eat. Pack some
clothes. It might be the first time he ever really needs us.”

Her
husband said, “Not counting that first time, Grace. You’re the
boy’s mother, out and out. Nobody can say you’re not.” He
headed out the door for the barn.

Grace,
relaxed for a mere minute, remembered the first time she held the
boy. It all came back to her and it was all worth it. She loved him
with a passion she had never known, a mother’s passion. She knew
what it meant.

When
Ditson brought the rig to the door, she was ready with clothes, food
for the journey, and an ache in her heart that her boy might run into
trouble. Jimmy had gone to town a week earlier where he had spent
much time lately it seemed to her. It caused a smile she did not keep
hidden from her husband.

For
Jimmy the earlier ride into Sunquit was always the same for him, with
the whole earth calling out to be noticed; the clutches of pine
trees, the bunches of colorful flowers like checkerboards on the
plains, the ridges so clearly defined in cliff faces they were like
pages in a book and he knew he was being taught, that learning never
ends even if you stop looking because you just start to hear it or
smell it and you’re right back where you started, looking at it
from an anthill to a mountain top and the sun kissing that mountain
top like a girl kisses her lover in morning’s realization. Life, he
knew, sparkled from that realization; he’d seen that from his
parents.

Out
beyond, in the wide-spread grass running to horizons, the prairie
dogs called out. Overhead the hawks shifted their wings or trimmed
their feathers onto new thermal edges and he swore he could read
their eyes like a language spoken to him long ago, perhaps something
his father had said in the shade of the barn or on the porch at night
with fireflies for hovering company, or in the darkness of his room
when covers were tucked in around him and the moon sat in his window
like a Christmas present waiting to be opened.

Out
there, beyond the hand-reach of growing things, the cholla cactus and
the Devil’s Claw had made deep footholds in wide swaths of
landscape, like signposts had been erected for him and those who
thought the way he did and rode the same road he did. Interpretation
meant survival; he could feel it.

Sub-vocal
speech pounded at him as he rode along, the river at times like a
sheet unwinding from a huge roller, and catching the sun in so many
angles he allowed that he could at times be blinded by their beauty
and brightness. He wondered if he really wanted to be sheriff, and
the earth gave him the answer, as it had always answered his many
questions. So much was right on the earth that everything he could do
to keep it that way was his responsibility. The lime hue of mesquite
wrapped around his eyes and lingered there as if it wanted to be
tasted, like a summer quench of aide on the porch at home on a hot
day keeps punching at you without mercy until you know lime at the
back of your throat for the balance of the day.

As usual the river
kept calling for attention. Ripples. Animal or fish movement.
Glancing sunlight like a mirror had been struck. The odor of
rank-smelling arrow weed crawled to him from the near bank of the
river. The dense thickets lined the river and smaller stream beds
that marched overland to reach that long rush to the Gulf of Mexico.
Much earlier he had determined that arrow weed stems were used for
arrow shafts by local Indians. That came at him as another lesson in
the classroom of the earth, and he was able to interpret the
teachings that came to him: never close your senses to what is sent
your way from the earth itself. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

The
ride of his parents was just as quiet most of the way. They finally
loosened up from inner grasps, freeing their thoughts, as a few
riders on horseback said hello and passed on ahead of them, obviously
going in for the voting and what the weekend would bring to the
celebration. Ditson had carriage blankets and oats onto the rig, and
a rifle and ammo boxes sat at his feet. Grace paid no attention to
the arms, though she realized that her husband was almost as good a
shot as their son. It had taken him a few years practice to catch up
to the boy who was a natural at everything he tried. An absolute
natural who presumed survival. She could taste it. Long ago she had
accepted his Indian blood as responsible for many of his talents, for
his alertness, for his own sense of survival and that which he found
himself responsible for. He never told her in words, but she saw it,
as open as a page in a book.

A
distant neighbor, from father up the river, caught up to them, after
hailing them from a distance. “Hey, Joe, Grace, I guess we’re all
heading into town to make our vote. I’ll vote for Jimmy. He’s a
sure fire winner. Catch up to me at the hotel, I’m getting thirsty.
Been on the road all day. My son Paulie went in yesterday, Bobby’s
coming in the morning. They’re all excited. I heard we’re having
some kind of fireworks when it’s all tallied. I can’t wait. See
you there.” He tipped his hat to Grace and was off down the road.

From
the river came three shots as they rounded a bend in the road. Other
neighbors, on two boats and a raft tied together, were floating down
to Sunquit and hailed them with saluting gunfire. “See you in town,
folks,” they yelled out. “Good luck to the winner.”

Grace
said, “Oh, Joe, I hope he doesn’t lose and I hope he doesn’t
win.” She grabbed his arm and hugged him. “We’ve got to be
ready.”

Puzzled
for a moment, Ditson said, “For what, Grace?”

“You
know as well as I do, Joe. It won’t be easy for him. People are
funny with things like that, especially those who’ve lost family in
the Indian affairs.”

He
nodded, understanding that he had again not fooled her one bit.

That
afternoon, later, with a cluster of clouds darkening the sky but no
rain expected, all kinds of hell broke loose in Sunquit.

When
the sun broke through a cleft in the clouds, its slanted rays almost
like a beamed flash down a tunnel, a Shoshoni Indian woman rode into
town, right down the main street of Sunquit, past the bank and the
saloon and the general store where a cluster of people stood
gawk-eyed staring at her and her horse and her raiment, a cluster of
beads and leather thongs and small strips of shiny metal draping the
front of her deerskin dress. With a slow and deliberate movement, she
dropped her reins in front of the sheriff’s office. Regal looking,
possibly a princess in the tribe, she sat so erect in the saddle
people might think she was strapped to a board.

The
outgoing sheriff rushed outside when he heard people yelling, a
raucous screaming of threats and curses not heard in a while.

“Get
her out of town, sheriff. She’s trying to win the election for the
Shoshoni sheriff waiting to get elected. It’s all rigged. They’re
going to take our town away from us. They’ve been waiting to get it
back.”

“Easy,
now, folks. Let’s see what she has to say. Don’t guess at what
might have brought her here.”

“String
her up like they did a few years ago to the whole McWilliams family.
Even the kids. Hang her right here. I’ll get the rope.”

Jimmy
Ditson, lingering on the edges, became Johnny on the spot, moving to
the front of the crowd and saying to the blabber mouth, “You going
to put the noose around her neck, Lugo? You going to slap the rump of
your own horse to kill a woman?"

“Easy,
new, easy, now,” said the sheriff again, his hand resting nervously
on his holster.

“What
have you got to say, lady? Who are you?”

The
queenly-looking woman looked around and pointed at two men, a rancher
who had come into town for the voting, and his foreman, a big hulking
man.

“Ask
them,” she said, her hand pointing yet at the two men.

“Why
the hell ask us?” both men said almost at once.

“Because
18 years ago, when I was just 14 years old, I was raped in my own bed
on the ranch and ran away because I was so ashamed. The Shoshonis
took me in and raised me. I was woman to Maken’towa’ttapph, a
great leader, and he let me keep the child that was in me. He was
good to me, more a father than a husband.”

The
rancher, seeking recognition, feeling the soul rise out of his body,
remembering all the pain of a missing daughter, a runaway or victim
of kidnapping, found something in her eyes. It was like looking at
into his wife’s eyes, her a long time dead from the pain of a lost
child.

“Is
that you, Esmie?” He was crying as he walked towards her, but even
then he could not put his arms out to touch her.

The
big, hulking man, the foreman, tried to slip away in the crowd.

“Stop
him,” she said. “He was the one who raped me, in my own bed. He
is the father of the boy I left on the ranch with the good people,
the people who have raised him, the one they call Jimmy Ditson.

It
all came apart for many people, the long-time adopting parents, the
boy who became a man, the girl’s father, the man who raped her in
her own bed, the town of Sunquit.

The
rapist, trying to run away, was shot by the girl’s father, even as
the dead man’s son and the shooter’s grandson looked on, before
he, possibly the new sheriff, could get his gun out of his own
holster.

Jimmy
Ditson walked to the Indian woman. “My mother? Are you my real
mother?” He looked over his shoulder at the Ditsons standing in the
crowd. They were as silent as the crowd had become, a taste of loss
in their mouths, a tug beginning its deep pull at their heartstrings.

“Yes.
When you were a baby in the basket papoose I had a dream about you as
a young man and I called you He Who Walks on Warm Water. In
Shoshoni language , in Sosoni’ daigwapeha, it is said
‘Udenhakki-ba’I’mi’qwa baaquyu’wai’I’. And I am
called Dosa’hepinkepph’maaqwandbuubi’ba’anqu, White Flower
Bent Over, because I came with a child in me, this child who has
become a man despite his real father.”

In
truth, she was addressing the crowd in the middle of Sunquit’s main
street. “He is the image of his adoptive father and my adoptive
husband, this boy has become this man who wants to be your sheriff.”

Later
that memorable day in the town’s history, when the badge was pinned
on Jimmy Ditson’s shirt, the talk about “a Shoshoni Sheriff “
gone like mist under sun, his two mothers were there, his adoptive
father, his grandfather, and the whole town of Sunquit, practically
every man and woman in the town limits.

A
week later, Grace and Joe Ditson headed home after the swearing-in
ceremony and enjoying Jimmy hearing from his real mother the quick
legends and histories she had learned from tribal elders. A natural
story teller, she spoke half in Shoshoni and half in western
American, charming her son who sat bright-eyed and attentive to every
word.

Jimmy
beamed hearing about Mogollons and Zunis and the basket-making
Anasazi and how all the way back, much earlier in the history of the
world, the early Indians had crossed the ice in the north from
another world and came down along the great Snake River to find new
homes. He knew he was an heir, in some part, to all of it.

And
further along the road, as the Ditsons approached their ranch up
along the Snake River, the ride comfortable, the sun touching them
with its grace, the prairie flowers all abloom about them, their
adopted son Jimmy Ditson the new sheriff of Sunquit, they both turned
to look back at the crest of the hill behind them. Together they
waved at the figure on the crest of the rise waving back to them
before disappearing from sight.